Berkeley Breathed, the artist behind the cartoon strip, Bloom Country that features a cynical penguin, ran series of T-shirts with his artwork on them. His social media promotions for the T-shirts featured photo-shopped images of Trump wearing his T-shirt.

According to Breathed in a Facebook post, he received a letter that he claimed was written by the law firm named Kasowitz Benson Torrez, LLP, with a caption “Arrived this morning.”

The signature on what looks like a cease and desist letter is from none other than Trump’s personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz.

The Big Reveal

The supposed letter from Trump’s attorney Kasowitz threatened to sue if Breathed did not desist from using photo shopped images of Trump and his family in promotions of his business. However, as real as the letter looks, it has since been verified as fake.

The purported letter went viral on the internet with reactions against Trump from people who assumed he abandoned his busy schedule to engage in a legal battle with a cartoonist.

Although Trump loves nothing more than to take time out of his busy schedule to try to stomp on the First Amendment, in this case, Kazowitz Benson Torres LLP decried the letter was a fraud.

The letter promptly went viral, as those who believed it – even a number of mainstream news outlets – reacted to the letter in outrage, having missed an obvious tell towards the end:

“To use language that you might understand (per my client’s wishes) we will have your [blanked out] in a sling by lunch.”

Since the big reveal from Snopes that the letter isn’t real, Breathed has come up with a follow-up post to cushion the effect of the false letter saying he just wanted to have a little fun with the president. He wrote in his letter that he was just having fun but promised not use Trump’s image any further in his business promotions.

According to a report from CrowdTangle, which tracks social media activities, the original Facebook post was seen by three million newsfeeds and generated 78,000 interactions of people reacting commenting and sharing the post.

One of the t-shirts that were supposedly part of the cease and desist letter:

It must have been a very bad day for Trump, the public reaction to the fake threat letter showed how many eyes are watching him as a president and how many hammers are hanging up in the air waiting to hit him hard, should he miss his step.